Electrical waste

Waste & a circular economy

Wheelie bins

Waste in schools

  • Primary schools generate around 45kg of waste per pupil, per academic year
  • Secondary schools produce about 22kg of waste per pupil each academic year
  • More than 70% of school waste is food, paper, and card
  • 80% of waste generated by schools is recyclable but only 20% gets recycled

The Business Waste website provides a lot of information about school waste and advice on how to reduce this. Strategies can be put in place to develop behaviour change to consider our resources more and reduce waste.

Statistics from businesswaste.co.uk

Simpler Recycling Legislation

This new legislation came in March 2025 which requires schools as well as businesses, to separate their recyclable waste from their general waste. The government advice states:

The new default requirement for workplaces with more than 10 employees including schools will be 4 containers for:

  • residual (non-recyclable) waste
  • food waste (mixed with garden waste if appropriate)
  • paper and card
  • all other dry recyclable materials (plastic, metal and glass)

These may be various container types, including bags, bins or stackable boxes.

This is the government’s maximum default requirement and is not expected to increase in the future. However, councils and other waste collectors will still have the flexibility to make the best choices to suit local need.

 

Follow the links for more advice on the legislation:

Improving recycling in school may require behaviour change as well as more bins. One idea may be to have stickers printed with a list of what can and can’t go into the bin. Hold an assembly to let students know about the changes and why it is important to put their waste into the correct bin.

Local schools have a printed list of what can and can’t go in the bin. They have improved the waste going into the correct bin. Please contact us at hello@schools-ecolinks.co.uk if you would like more information about them.

Veolia provides free recycling posters that can be printed on their website.

What is a circular economy

A circular economy is a principle for looking at how we produce and use the things we want or need that doesn’t produce waste:

  • Designing products to be long-lasting, reusable, repairable, and recyclable.
  • Creating ways to keep unwanted items in circulation.
  • Breaking down and re-using materials, preventing waste.
  • Running our economy in an environmentally friendly way, providing local jobs, healthier lifestyles, and protecting our natural resources.

Read more

Read on to find ways of reducing school waste by reducing, re-using, re-purposing, sharing, and as a last resort – recycling, to contribute to a circular economy.

Love Food, Hate Waste

Food waste

A third of all food produced in the world is wasted.

If food waste were a country, it would rank as the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases

“Food waste is estimated to account for almost half of the waste, by weight, from primary schools in England and almost a third of waste, by weight, from secondary schools in England.”

Source: Western Riverside Waste Authority, Wandsworth

Since March 2025, we have had new legislation called ‘Simpler Recycling’ which aims to make recycling simpler by reducing the amount of bins needed to split the items. Under this Legislation schools now need to keep food waste apart from all other waste so it can be collected by your waste contractor for composting.

Your school should have been advised about what this means for you by your waste contractor.

Food waste bin

What can we do?

School food waste is produced in different locations around the school and may be disposed of in certain ways.

  • Food waste produced by the catering team – if your catering provision is outsourced, their food waste will be collected by a company chosen by them.
    Questions to ask your catering manager:
    – How much food waste they produce and where this goes? Many companies send their food waste to a anaerobic digester facility where it is turned into energy.
    – Are staff trained to reduce food waste?
    – Can their vegetable waste be collected by students, mixed with shredded paper and added to a school compost bin?
    – Can leftover meals be packaged up and sold at the end of the day?
Students building a compost
  • Food from the canteen and packed lunches wasted by the students – this is the responsibility of the school to dispose of.
  • Food waste from Food Technology lessons, fruit snacks, or other food activities / class parties – this will need to be collected separately and disposed of with the students food waste.
    – Vegetable and fruit snack waste could be collected and mixed with shredded paper and added to the compost bin.
  • Read more about composting at school on our gardening page.
Photo of a lunch serving counter

One way to tackle this food waste is to find out why students are wasting food. You could survey the students why they are wasting food and make adjustments if possible.

  • Do they like the food?
  • Are portions too large?
  • Do they have enough time to eat?
WRAP food waste resource front page

The charity WRAP has produced the following advice sheets:

The School Food Plan website has more advice for improving school meals and the dining experience.

Cardboard recycling.

Paper and cardboard

  • Where is paper used? – carry out an audit of your paper use and look for ways to make a reduction. Ask the students too.
  • Can you use online resources instead?
  • Papercut is a printing management system designed to support you to reduce printing waste. Visit their website to discover how.
  • Delete unnecessary content and blank areas before printing resources.
  • Develop behaviour change by educating staff and students about the need to cut down use.
  • Ensure you have a labelled paper recycling bin in each classroom.
  • Can unfilled exercise books be used the following year?
  • Have a scrap paper drawer and encourage students to use it where necessary.
photocopier
  • Coordinate with other departments to share or bulk buy resources to prevent ordering too much and to cut down on packaging.
  • Buy from local suppliers to reduce packaging from shipping.
  • Does your school have a compost heap? Too much green waste makes a compost heap too wet and smelly, paper is a perfect material to be added to balance this out.
  • Discuss swapping throwaway packaging for reusable tableware with you catering team.
  • Does your school have a large area of grass? A radical idea would be to create a large compost area in your school grounds to compost used paper and cardboard with grass clippings together.
Plastic Free Schools - Surfers Against Sewage

Single use plastics

Sign up to become a Plastic Free School with Surfers Against Sewage for useful resources to help you to reduce single use plastics in school.

Sign up for the Big Plastic Count in March.

Keep a collection of reusable tableware for class parties or use a local hire company. Find a local supplier through the Party Kit Network. Why not become a party kit hirer and raise money for your school.

Build a collection of reusable plastic party plates by asking in local recycling groups.

Plastic bottles

In one local school 200 bottles of water are purchased per day. If the students could all use a reusable bottle, that will prevent 1000 plastic bottles going to landfill and save families money.

If you are looking to install water refill points, our conversations with students show they prefer a bottle refill station rather than a water fountain as they worry about germs. The station also needs to be kept clean and the water cold for them to want to use it. Encourage families to invest in insulated water bottles to keep water cool for longer.

Can you ask the school’s catering company to replace plastic bottles with cans of drink?

Encourage students to use a reusable bottle by making it a part of your uniform policy or give house points for remembering a reusable bottle.

Stationery

  • Hold a stationery swap.
  • Collect unwanted stationery at the end of the school year and hold a sale at the school fair or a regular sale to raise funds for your school or a local cause.
  • Look for charities who collect stationery to send to children who need them. Pens for Kids – collect pens and pencils.
  • Used pens can be recycled. Ask your stationery supplier if they do this. Some office supply stores also offer pen and marker recycling stations near the entrance. A box can be purchased from Terracycle to start a collection. See their website for free recycling programmes to join.
  • Look for a local scrap store who collect unwanted craft and stationery supplies. They are also a great place to buy supplies very cheaply. Locally we have the Eastbourne Scrap Store, Over the Moon in Shoreham, the Scrap Space, Brighton.
  • Set up an ink cartridge recycling box and raise money for your school or a local cause by registering with Recycle 4 Charity.

School uniform

An incredible 1.4 million wearable school uniforms are thrown away each year in the UK.

Collecting donations of used school uniform to sell for a minimal price saves waste, helps families and can also raise money for your school. If your school doesn’t have a school uniform shop, this toolkit can give you tips and ideas on how to start one. 

If a uniform shop isn’t possible at your school, could you set up a school Facebook group where families can swap or sell their used uniform to each other?

Find out if your local area has a school uniform bank or exchange and promote this to your students. There is still a lot of stigma around wearing second hand clothes, helping students to see the positives of wearing them could help to prevent mountains of clothes from going to landfill.

Local school uniform banks and exchanges:

Please get in touch to tell us about your uniform exchange.

Have you ever thought about the amount of plastic in school uniform? Find out more from – No Plastic Uniforms.

Sports boots

If students are not involved in a sport outside of PE which requires sports boots, they may only need boots for 6 weeks in a school year for PE. Could your school have a library of different sized boots for students to borrow for PE to save them buying new? Ask families to donate their old boots to build up your supplies.

Some schools have a tub full of muddy, wet boots which puts off students from borrowing them. To encourage students to use the school’s supply, can they be stored neatly where they can dry out quickly after use and are easy to find? Encourage students to knock the mud off after use to prolong the life of the boots.

Do you have space to have a sports boots library?

Textbooks

When students are required to buy textbooks for school, could your school collect used books at the end of the year to sell at a reduced price for the students in the following year to save money for families as well as saving resources?

E waste

If you have broken small electrical appliances, can they be fixed? Your local Repair Cafe may be able to help. Repair Cafe volunteers will fix your items for free to save them going to waste.

If they can’t be fixed, visit Recycle your Electricals to find a local recycling point. Electrical items contain up to 75% of valuable recyclable materials.

For computers, laptops and phones, your school will probably have a contract where old devices are taken by a company. It’s useful to know about the local organisations who can wipe the data from old devices and pass them onto local families who need them.

Read this article by Computer Waste about the strict WEEE Recycling Schools UK regulation and GDPR data destruction laws before recycling your computers.

Furniture

Before throwing away unwanted school furniture, can it be used somewhere else in the school? If it needs fixing, can a request be sent to families or ask your local Repair Cafe?

Can unwanted school furniture be offered to families or the local community? Find your local recycling or selling Facebook group or advertise on Freegle.